Paul Attinello

Author: paulattinello

  • Marking

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    paulattinello
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    Marking many, many first-year exams in twentieth-century musics… but, for the first time ever, with the help of two postgraduates, which makes life vastly easier. There are the usual glitches and amusing misstatements… although it's a pretty solid class (only one fail thus far!) and most of the exams are pretty coherent. However, at least…

  • Hot / James & time / Dollhouse / Göteborg

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    paulattinello
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    It is actually almost hot out: in the low seventies (Fahrenheit – even after living in Centigrade countries for more than twelve years now, I just cannot think in Centigrade, in spite of its logic). In California, of course, it would be merely a normal day out of, say, eight months of the year in…

  • Light and air

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    paulattinello
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    After an amazingly unproductive weekend – even for me (my excuses: last week was full of meetings, this week has too much student work that needs marking, some of which is good but much of which is distinctly disappointing) – I'm avoiding everything, and everyone, by looking through vast books of architecture. 1000 x European…

  • Palermo Shooting

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    paulattinello
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    The title of Wim Wenders' 2008 film. Not very successful, widely regarded as pretentious and self-indulgent; and it's true that the script isn't subtle or surprising (who would have thought Death would be so talkative and sententious?). But this isn't a review… for real film people, it may be a failure; but for me it's…

  • Anniversary

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    paulattinello
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    Yesterday (oops, missed it) was the third anniversary of this blog. 460 entries – that's about one entry every two-and-a-third days. Sorry I haven't been blogging lately… life has consisted of, on the one hand, scattered and rather disorganized external demands (students discovering that they need to do some work before the end of the…

  • Boy band

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    paulattinello
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    Hmm, what a ruthlessly symbolic dream: sitting around with a bunch of charming, handsome, talented young men who have a (classical, I think) ensemble that has somehow become famous; I ask them to come perform, collaborate, work with us in the North, and they say no, politely, with regret – we'd love to, but we…

  • Limitations; and, The Great German Novel

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    paulattinello
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    Even among these pleasant spring days, various small pleasant encounters, and the sense of positive direction I've developed in the past six months (related to Jung and analysis), I keep being made uneasily aware of limits, barriers, walls. A sense of shortened time, news of health concerns: will I really have to inject myself with…

  • Christos anesti!

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    paulattinello
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    Greek – whether ancient or modern, two wildly different languages – is beautiful but so intricate, so incomprehensible: for someone like me who considers himself fairly familiar with a variety of Western European languages, it seems alien, unrelated. And yes, of course it's Indo-European – but from such a distant branch…. My mother's family, and…

  • …

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    paulattinello
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    I am disoriented by the awareness of great chunks of time: time that is going by too quickly, time that is long gone, time that is frozen. Why, for instance, in these sleepless early mornings, should I remember the amazingly loud tropical birds outside my Hong Kong apartment? And my unease when I woke because…

  • Hilarity

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    paulattinello
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    Marie-Louise von Franz on the puer aeternus… I'm reading it because my new analyst mentioned it to me, rather pointedly. The book is a bit embarrassing, because it is too much on the mark in many places. However, it is also brilliant, fascinating, intelligent as she always is. (Was: I would have loved to have…